From Oscar to Alaska

Feb 23

Ian, Edgar, Bill, Lynne, Glenn, Rita, Mary, Ray, Bob, Andy

Another nomad returns to the fold: after Libby last week it was Glenn, fresh from the surgeon's knife. about 25lbs lighter but happily claiming the procedure and its aftermatch were virtually pain-free. He was made to walk around just a few hours after coming round from the anaesthetic, and left hospital a mere five days later. Thanks to modern surgery, a triple bypass has become almost a routine op - and Glenn said one of the other patients had had a sextuple bypass. Amazing. But since he has been out, the old remedies have kicked in: regular exercise and a strict diet, which had him eating salmon tonight. But it's driving him nuts that he can't drive: the saintly Rita is his chauffeuse.
They said how thankful they were that they had an HMO health insurance policy, which covered them totally for the $96,000 that the hospital stay cost, BEFORE the surgeon's and anaesthetist's fees.
'I'd have been in a hotel room in the Huntington if we had had a PPO,' said Glenn, 'but we couldn't have afforded the 20% deductible.'
Being the night after the Oscars, the annual shebang was much trawled over with the help of Mary, who kindly brought her program for us all to peruse, with a sheaf of instructions on the night such as having to have a driver's license or passport to pass the ID checks. The general opinion was that the TV show was better than usual: at least they tried a few new ideas.
That led us into a wider discussion of movies and a trip down memory lane to the days when we used to see a B movie, maybe a cartoon or two and a newsreel before the main feature - often all shown continuously so you could turn up when you liked and just stay until you said 'This is where we came in'.
You can do something like that now at the multiplexes, because one ticket can let you flit from screen to screen and see several movies for your money. I've never done that, but I've often been tempted.
'But multiplexes have killed the movies,' intoned Bob, 'because they have allowed films to become bloated beyond audience endurance. Because multiplexes can play the same film on dufferent screens, a film can start every half hour without regard to running time. In a single screen set up, running time was a consideration because you need to get so meny screenings in per day to bring in enough dough to keep the doors open. Now it doesn't matter if a picture is 14 reels long, because it can play in three or five theaters in a multiplex and achieve the needed number of showings. Directors become self-indulgent and shoot extra footage--that extra footage costs money (sometimes as much as 40% below the line) and very few stories are worth the kind of screen time the extra footage entails. That is why mutiplexes have ruined the movies.'
The LA Times pointed out that the nominated titles for Best Picture had taken around $200m so far, but in 2003 the comparable figure was over $600m - a significant decline, not helped by the fact that there's just so much more grabbing our attention, from DVDs to Facebook.
Bob is a recent adherent Facebook in order, so he admitted, to generate publicity for his various projects. I suggested he put create a Facebook Group for Cinecon, which would make it much more interactive than at present. I also repeated my plea to be allowed to start a Rollo Fan Club, and I can reveal that Regina has - after consulting the peerless hound - agreed. I've started preparations already.
As often happens, one of the most interesting tales emerged right at the end, when nearly everyone else had gone home. Andy told us some of his exploits as a lawyer in Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, with no electricity, no running water, no locally grown vegetables (too cold for them to survive), no restaurants, no libraries, no telephone - just hiking, fishing, listening to a crackly radio and praying that the ship delivering supplies is not blocked by ice.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
The only people who come up to me in restaurants are three-year-old kids
What happens when you pass your old age?
If you have yr face lifted any more you'll have a goatee
I was a piccallily, not a piccaninny.
You have to have a god complex to be a surgeon
The camera just loves people with small bodies and big heads: don't ask me why.
If you can survive a Conrads dinner, you must be feeling ok

Sinatra's secret

Feb 16

Ian, Regina, Edgar, Bill, Lynne, Will, Jim, Libby, Bob, Ben, Steve L, Jeanette, Andy, Ray, Joan

We were delighted to be able to greet Libby's return to the fold, in an all-too-rare visit that we all hope will be converted once again into regular appearances - with or without fur coat and wig.
Ian made a great fuss of Libby, buoyed as he was by the realization that the play he is in - The Jazz Age - has the makings of a huge success. A packed house is a packed house, however small the venue, and Ian even allowed himself the dream of accompanying it on a London run, in some edgy venue off-off West End. If only...
With less than a week to go before the Oscars, and an Academy voter (Will) in our midst, there was much talk of the chances of the nominees. Milk and Slumdog Millionaire had their devotees for best picture, Sean Penn seemed to be the local favorite as best actor and Philip Seymour Hoffman as best supporting. No broad agreement on the two actress Oscars, although it seems to be between Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet for the top female award.
The long-running question, Do We Still Like Obama?, got another airing with most people reassuring one another that, whatever he does, he will still be better than either Bush or McCain - understandably, given the way McCain still keeps putting his foot in it on the stimulus and housing rescue packages. Myself, I see the beginnings of a trimmer whose top priority is going to be survival. I think the forgiveness will have worn thin by Labor Day.
Edgar was telling Libby how his employers regularly ditch, or at least give to thrift stores, library books that are rarely read, and few borrowers choose fiction that is more than ten years old - let alone the classics. This is sad, but part of the iPhonisation of books and newspapers, where the soundbite dominates at the expense of the considered work of prose, fiction or non-fiction.
I was horrified to discover that the US, land of the free and defender of property rights, has no equivalent to the British Public Lending Right, which pays authors a small royalty every time their book is borrowed from a public library. It's not much - I've just received six pounds and thirteen pence in ye English monnie for last year, which at current exchange rates doesn't even buy me a Conrads dinner, but at least it recognises the principle that potential sales are being lost through free-at-point-of-selection libraries. Time for a campaign: are you listening, Barack
Some of us have continued to attend the Phil Spector trial, which is dragging on to its conclusion amid schoolyard name-calling by the rival attorneys. Let's hope the final speeches and the judge's summing up will make sense of it. At any rate, Judge Fidler must know more about Spector than any other man alive.
Will ended by telling a long but fascinating tale about his upclose experiences with Frank Sinatra, mainly at the Greek Theatre in the 1980s. On the third and final occasion he had the luck to be in the wings as Sinatra went into his act - and saw that the great man was reading the words off a Teleprompter! I suppose he had too many songs to remember by then, but it somehow tarnishes the effortless impression he gave. Ho hum, another god with feet of clay.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
He looks gay just walking up steps
Do you know where I can get cowgirl clothing?
Some people aspire to prostitution
We don't want Will to be promiscuous, do we?
You know best - in this regard, at least
She was developing another boyfriend
We've met a lot of your old girlfriends - and they were all very nice, really they were

Naked or nude? That is the question

Feb 2
Bill, Lynne, Ray, Ian, Bob, Steve L, Jeanette, Andy, Will, Jim, Ben

Although there were eleven of us at Conrads on Monday night, there were never more than eight at any one time because Will and Bob left early while Jim, Ben and (of course) Andy arrived late.
Ian, who was sporting another Band-Aid on his nose from shutting the back door of his car, was again worrying about the recession.
'Why are all the restaurants I go to so busy? I don't think there's a recession,' he said. 'It's not just here - Cantalini's is the same.'
I pointed out that high-end venues - even higher-end than Cantalini's - were suffering first, places like Parkway Grill. It's like in retail: Neiman Marcus is well down while Wal-Mart is up. We'll know the recession is really biting when people stay at home rather than go to even the cheap places. But, we pledged, Monday nights at Conrads will go on, come what may?
That may be more than can be said for the Mayflower Club, which Ray was promoting as a home-from-home for British expats. Its numbers are down, too - not surprisingly, judging from the menu.
Bob got us talking about his great expertise, old movie stars, he is lecturing at the Barn next week on two of them, Francis Ford and Grace Cunard. By little or no coincidence, one of Bob's favorite film, How Green Was My Valley, was directed by Francis Ford's younger brother, John. Pressed by Lynne, though, he admitted that his absolute favorite was Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons. Lots of people seem to rate How Green as among their top films, but it is of course immediately disqualified as far as I am concerned as it is all about Welsh folk. Still, I suppose they seem quite charming from this distance.
Via a diversion onto films noir - the annual Egyptian season isn't far off - we somehow got talking about WC Fields and Charlie Chaplin. Ian, the great defender of British music hall, insisted that Fields had got his act and overall style from Harry Tate (1872-1940), the Scottish comedian - who, ironically in view of later history, was born Ronald McDonald. Now why would you give up a name like that in favor of Harry Tate, unless someone in showbiz already owned it?
This gave Ian the excuse he needed to have a go at another icon, Chaplin, and how he had pinched his stage mannerisms from the lesser British comedians in Fred Karno's Army, the group that brought him to America.
Another member of the Karno troup was Arthur Jefferson, later Stan Laurel who, as Jim remarked, was nothing until he was teamed up with Oliver Hardy by Hal Roach in 1920 - as with all the other famous double acts, they were nothing on their own and breakaways were rarely successful, right up to and including Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
Bob had, like Bill and Lynne, been to see Minsky's at the Ahmanson Theatre, which got us onto the history and origin of burlesque and how it was eclipsed by striptease - and now, so I am told, by lap dancing.
Minsky's, we agreed, is a rattling good evening in the old tradition - nothing original, but what it does it does well.
The nearest to burlesque in London was the Windmill Theatre where, thanks to the iron rule of the Lord Chamberlain* in those days, the women could be naked but could not move or speak. The only speech came from the comedians who had the thankless task of keeping the almost entirely male audience amused between scene changes.
While the girls were naked they were always referred to as nudes. The two words mean the same: so what's the difference? It turns out that nude is Latin while naked is Old English and therefore considered more vulgar.

*The Lord Chamberlain licensed every show, and had to be sent every script before a show could be staged, until the law was changed in 1968.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
If that man comes he'll never stop talking
What do you care what I'm having? Are you going to eat it? I don't think so!
Drapes don't wear out - just wash them
I've always loved WC Fields
What you've got to do is get your head out of the way, then you won't hit your nose
There are ten million stories in a naked city, but no nudes is good nudes
I'm going to enjoy life without drink, I really am